The first team of Begumpur, shot in 2011

***The school has a reasonable hockey ground. We first levelled it with JCB; cleared all debris, we were even successful in making green top on virtually a beach like sandy parts of the ground. By all means, we have established a hockey legacy.

***Government of Delhi has acknowledged the improvement the school had made over the last three years, and therefore in their wisdom appointed a part time hockey coach. It means the state government has declared the school as one of the State Hockey Centres.

State Hockey Centre implies the school will henceforth get equipment and technical support regularly.

This is exactly what we want to achieve. We want to be a catalyst. We enter a school where hockey had never been heard of, not to speak of availability of field of play, and make it a neo Hockey Centre. Now the little known Begumpur is a State Hockey Centre.

We gave free equipment, free coaching for three years; created and maintained a hockey ground, got the boys at least six tournament exposures per year, and in the process saw dozen of hockey gems germinating.

Six of Begumpur boys in the Delhi OTHL XI team

This school team visited Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), Bhilwara (Rajasthan) and Nagpur (Maharashtra).

We, as a concept, don’t want to sit on our achievement to reap its benefits for the sake of growth of our NGO.

Our priority is hockey, not NGO.

Our objective is to create AS MANY BEGUMPURS AS POSSIBLE.

It can only be achieved if we move out of Begumpur.

Yes, this we have done it after a year of dilemma and discussion, mainly because of emotional attachment we all had with this school, as it gave identity to our work in Delhi city.

That’s the reason we bade goodbye to the school on 31st March 2014.

Brajgopal, the forward, is a great trier

On that day, we invited all the players, gave them a small party, issue certificate based on their duration of practice and degree of achievement. We also thanked School Principal Mr. Varma and Games teacher Mr. Kulwinder Singh for all their co-operation, without which we stood nowhere.

It was also an emotional decision, very difficult to take, as most of the stars of the team are backbone of entire Delhi OTHL phenomena, role models for new kids and sentimentally attached to many of us, HCG volunteers. Besides, at least half a dozen of them are extremely vital to our competitive needs.

We have to, therefore, work hard and double to fill up the talent vacuum created by their exit.